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| The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, Stockholm 2010. © Carl A. |
The Mayans were pretty smart people. They watched nature and space and learnt about cyclical movements. Meaning: everything comes to an end sooner or later. They knew it just as well as we do today. Suddenly... Their skilled priesthood could foresee a disaster so profound around the Winter Solstice 2012 that they simply decided to suppress the information. ”If it’s not on a map or in a chart, then we can pretend it’s not going to happen. Let the future people handle it... Let’s just pretend it won’t happen...”
But it did. The disaster was inevitable, traumatizing, shocking, affecting masses of people and changing destiny in irrevocable ways. What happened?, you might ask. What have you missed? Well, on December 22nd 2012, one of my favourite bands, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, played their last ever concert. For six consecutive nights at Södra Teatern in Stockholm, they played the material from each of their six albums, complemented by hits, personal favourites and requests from the audience. A mighty feat indeed.
For reasons of time more than anything else, I decided to go to the very last evening only. Not because the final album, Throw It to the Universe is my favourite TSOOL album (that would be Welcome to the Infant Freebase), but simply to take part of something truly definitive. A piece of history, if you will.
Definitive it was. And historical. It was probably the most touching concert I’ve ever been to. Two sets spanning over a little more than four hours in all provided us with all the phenomenal cock rock glory we ever needed, and then some. Ebbot Lundberg, Ian Person, Fredrik Sandsten, Kalle Gustafsson, Martin Hederos and Mattias Bärjed poured their musical affluence into our hungry minds for the very last time. Moments of ecstasy containing sadness and longing before it was even over. An amplified symbiosis leaving everyone emotionally drenched.
An obvious starter was ”If nothing lasts forever”, which immediately set the stage (literally) for an intimate union of band and audience. It was basically the theme of the evening: nothing lasts forever, so let’s make the most of it... A very healthy philosophy. And enjoyable. Throw It To The Universe was indeed thrown to the universe, via the ecstatic audience. Energetically spiced up with ”Mantra Slider”, ”Confrontation Camp”, ”Instant Repeater 99”, ”Black Star”, ”Lost prophets in vain”, ”We’ll get by”, my absolute favourite ”Galaxy Grammophone”and many other TSOOL classics.
Their usually staccatoed, riff-based 70s rock’n’roll foundation was also allowed to space out several times, and it was a blast to see and hear what they were up to... ”Faster than the speed of light” was turned into a psychedelic improv bonanza, with a spontaneous will to experiment without any goals whatsover. Ace guitarist Mattias Bärjed made ultra-eerie sounds on his guitar strings while Ebbot sounded like a Mongolian shaman of some kind (and looked like one too). On one of the following tracks, Bärjed helped Sandsten out at the drums, while Ebbot played some kind of cosmic acid-drenched solo guitar. On many levels, there was a very loose atmosphere around.
The further into the evening we were pressed by the band’s sonic blitz, Ebbot’s pleasantries inbetween the songs became weirder and weirder. It was as if he knew that a moment was close at hand that was both dreaded and longed for. A moment of destiny. At such times, perhaps there’s really nothing left to say?
To top a loving and lovely evening off, other musicians, friends and girlfriends joined the ranks in an almost gospel-like choir on stage. ”Shine On” became the expected final anthem of the evening, and the audience joined in as much as the choir. I’m usually not a sucker for blatant emotionalism, but I wasn’t alone in feeling very touched by these glorious displays of mutual love and appreciation. With barely no voice left, Ebbot squeezed the last bits of the last words out as a gift to the Gods, grateful for some 18 years of elevated and electrified magnificence – and a guaranteed future seat in the Valhall of rock’n’roll.
TSOOL have been one of tightest bands I’ve ever seen. That’s what you get from touring a lot. But the magic is not concocted by some adherence to a collectivist formula. It’s rather based in a cauldron in which six very talented people stir the stuff together. They’re all magnificent virtuosi in their own right. That has undoubtedly been another key to their success: individual brilliance and expression within a unified context.
Sweden is an Ersatz nation with Ersatz culture and Ersatz rock. There are a lot of good rock bands around. But how many can or could actually rock? I know of only a few: Union Carbide Productions, Backyard Babies, Hellacopters, TSOOL and perhaps one or two others. When TSOOL frenzy up (or should I say ”frenzied” up now?) and Ian Person and Mattias Bärjed duel with their guitars, they manage to show off rock’n’roll not as an old phenomenon but as a thriving, throbbing, timeless beast. They have evoked that beast on every occasion I’ve seen TSOOL play.
How final is the end? Well, in the extremely vain territory of existence which constitutes rock music, you seemingly can’t keep a good corpse down for long. I remember going to the very last Swans show ever, in London 1997. It was, as expected, a phenomenal concert and it carried the same kind of (de)finite and extremely emotional impetus. Something was over. That was it. There was also a very nice after-party, where Mr Gira had placed me at the same table as Nick Cave and Michael Hutchence. Not much rock’n’roll there though. Those two distinguished Australians discussed their real estate investments. Anyway, during the past 18 months, I have seen/heard Swans twice live. The Swan Song of 1997 was just a call for rest and other projects. And that’s totally fine with me.
As for TSOOL, who knows what the future will bring...? I don’t. I don’t think they do either. No matter what, they will be loved always. Thank you for the music and good times, etc. Right now, however, a psychedelic cock rock fairy tale is over. The Apocalypse is now a fact. The Mayans were right all along.
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